“The analysts who follow Apple seemed to understand what the traders who drove Apple’s shares down $5.40 (1.57%) Monday did not: The hundreds of improvements in its software ecosystem — big and small — that Apple announced Monday will, in the long run, sell more devices, convert more customers, and make more money for the company than the new iPhone some were apparently still expecting Steve Jobs to pull out of his sleeve,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky: No Surprises, but Possible Game Changer… By ‘cutting the cord’ to the PC, Apple may expand its addressable device market by 4x, addressing the ~3B handset users who have a phone — but not a PC. We believe we may see new devices in time, based off iCloud services. As we expected, Apple did not unveil a new iPhone at WWDC; however, we continue to expect iPhone5 in September
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster: Bottom line is that Apple is increasing the likelihood that consumers buy multiple Apple devices. What’s new is that Apple will be giving away iCloud for free (we had expected it to be priced between $25-$99 a year). This will allow Apple devices to automatically share contacts, calendars, messages, photos, apps, and music purchased on iTunes; sharing non iTunes music will cost $25 a year. (As a point of reference, Amazon’s Cloud drive could cost up to $200 a year.) Also, Apple made it easier for consumers to have an iPad or iPhone as their primary computing device because a computer is no longer needed to set up an iPad or iPhone.
More analysts’ reactions and price targets in the full article here.